Late to the party but I had the same issue. I created this report with Claude since I needed help with this issue. The short summary is that if there are enumerated save files steam will mistakenly report a cloud sync issues for the non existent saves’ files since it does not ignore them. You can see the AI flame me at the end of the summary AI Summary : Steam Cloud Sync Reports Failure for Empty Save Slots Summary Steam incorrectly reports cloud sync failure for save slots that were never used by the game, even though all real saves sync successfully. System Info OS: CachyOS (Arch-based) Steam: AUR package Filesystem: btrfs Game tested: Arco (App ID: 2366970) — likely affects all games with enumerated save slots Steps to Reproduce Install a game that uses numbered save slots (e.g. 1-auto.sav, 2-auto.sav … 10-auto.sav) Play the game without filling all save slots Observe Steam cloud sync notification — it reports failure Expected Behavior Steam should only attempt to sync save files that actually exist. Empty/unused slots should be ignored silently. Actual Behavior Steam registers all possible save slots in remotecache.vdf with: “size” “0” “sha” “0000000000000000000000000000000000000000” “syncstate” “2” It then reports a sync error for these nonexistent files, even though all real saves (syncstate “1”) are synced correctly. Evidence Real saves (exist locally and on cloud): “syncstate” “1” ← correctly synced “size” “61206” “sha” “ac58e84254dc8f32bb89c1ef4577f9e1a97a9d63” Empty slots (never created by the game): “syncstate” “2” ← reported as failed “size” “0” “sha” “0000000000000000000000000000000000000000” The files do not exist in the local Proton prefix either: ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/2366970/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/Application Data/arco/save/alpha_save/ Only the actually-used slots are present on disk. Impact Users are misled into thinking cloud sync is broken and may spend significant time debugging a non-issue.